Towards the end of the previous post of this pair, drawing from Susan Cain’s fascinating book, Quiet, we touched on something that can impact on close relationships between extraverts and introverts. This was the idea of a Free Trait Contract, where, for example, the extravert who wants to have a big dinner party every Saturday compromises with his introverted spouse and goes for every other week instead and allows her to have quiet conversations on the sidelines rather than have to stand centre stage as he does. She has given ground as well by agreeing to the fortnightly parties.
As an introvert married to an extravert I’m well used to this kind of give and take which is perhaps the most obvious way in which these two temperaments have to accommodate to each other if the relationship is going to survive. Susan Cain explains (page 227):
This was a painfully common dynamic in the introvert-extrovert couples I interviewed: the introverts desperately craving downtime and understanding from their partners, the extroverts longing for company, and resentful that others seemed to benefit from their partners’ “best” selves.
The last part relates to how introverts with a commitment to a demanding ‘core project’ of some kind (see previous post), exert themselves during the day for that purpose but come home frazzled and tired wanting only to collapse into silence to recharge their batteries (ibid.):
It can be hard for extroverts to understand how badly introverts need to recharge at the end of a busy day.
This lack of understanding is, of course, a two-way street (page 228):
It’s also hard for introverts to understand just how hurtful their silence can be.
You would think that the solution is obvious. Why don’t they just talk to each other? Unfortunately it’s not quite as straightforward as that, given that the two temperaments have two different communication styles (page 229):
Just as men and women often have different ways of resolving conflict, so do introverts and extroverts; studies suggest that the former tend to be conflict-avoiders, while the latter are “confrontive copers,” at ease with an up-front, even argumentative style of disagreement.
That’s tricky. She draws out the distinction very clearly with an example (page 232):
When Emily lowers her voice and flattens her affect during fights with Greg, she thinks she’s being respectful by taking the trouble not to let her negative emotions show. But Greg thinks she’s checking out or, worse, that she doesn’t give a damn. Similarly, when Greg lets his anger fly, he assumes that Emily feels, as he does, that this is a healthy and honest expression of their deeply committed relationship. But to Emily, it’s as if Greg has suddenly turned on her.
So, how do we deal with that? Again, I know from personal experience that this mismatch of styles is very upsetting to both parties when what starts out as a discussion ends up as an argument. One possibility, she suggests, is to learn from the Swami and the snake (page 232):
In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami—a man who has achieved self-mastery—convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise. “I told you not to bite,” said the swami, “but I did not tell you not to hiss.”
“Many people, like the swami’s cobra, confuse the hiss with the bite,” writes Tavris.
Basically, then Greg as the extravert and the introverted Emily (ibid.):
. . . . [b]oth have much to learn from the swami’s story: Greg to stop biting, Emily that it’s OK for him—and for her—to hiss.
This undoubtedly works, but both sides have to vigilant otherwise the introvert hiss becomes inaudible and the extravert hiss becomes ear-piercing.
I hope these posts have given a flavour of how useful and intriguing Susan Cain’s exploration of introversion is. Given that the success or failure of a society, a marriage or a family depends to a large extent upon the effectiveness of its communication, there is much of value to be learned from this book. Our communities have to find a place for both temperaments. Her references to the studies of the 2008 recession give a powerful example of exactly why.
Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) are characteristic of an introvert’s more cautious approach to life and its decisions. She explains its relevance (pages 163-164):
Disdain for FUD—and for the type of person who tends to experience it—is what helped cause the crash, says Boykin Curry, a managing director of the investment firm Eagle Capital . . . .
“Each time someone at the table pressed for more leverage and more risk, the next few years proved them ‘right.’ These people were emboldened, they were promoted and they gained control of ever more capital. Meanwhile, anyone in power who hesitated, who argued for caution, was proved ‘wrong’. The cautious types were increasingly intimidated, passed over for promotion. They lost their hold on capital. This happened every day in almost every financial institution, over and over, until we ended up with a very specific kind of person running things.”. . .
“People with certain personality types got control of capital and institutions and power,” Curry told me. “And people who are congenitally more cautious and introverted and statistical in their thinking became discredited and pushed aside.”
Stand by then for the quiet revolution!
I was at a meeting of an accountability forum yesterday at which an official of one of our major public authorities spoke about an extremely challenging situation in which individuals had been treated in ways that lead to justifiable accusations of racism, accusations that had been dismissed by the person working for this public authority who should have taken action to ensure the allegations were properly investigated. This failure risked the loss of public confidence in the authority concerned.
The official spoke quietly and with great power about how the situation had arisen and what was being done under her direction to rectify things. It struck me, as I listened to her account, that I was listening to an introvert who was exerting her quiet power on a matter of considerable public importance. There was no bluster, no attempt to spin the story, no oratorical fireworks, but a quietly told story, an acknowledgment that things had not been well handled, and an explanation of action being taken.
This quiet power held the room spellbound. It was not the least bit manipulative and the speaker was not attempting to get a particular response from us.
To my mind this was a prime example of the power of the quiet introvert!
Interesting post Peter, certainly worth reflection. We definitely need more poets, musicians, artists and quiet reflective thinkers serving on our institutions and in Government rather than the breast beating or self-marketing types which usually get elected or appointed. I will try to read the book. Instinctively, however I am always wary of the two kinds of people e.g. Introvert v Extrovert form of analysis as my personal experience suggests that much of our behavior is context specific and that most people learn to move up and down the spectrum to some extent.
The example of wall street investors given by Susan Cain which you cite may have some merit, but it does sound like one more attempt to shift the blame if you like away from the principal cause of the crisis which I would argue was systemic or if you like cultural. The lifting of restraints on capital flows and dismantling of regulatory oversight by the Reagan/Thatcher Administrations in the 80s was a clear signal from the top that high profit/risk strategies would be tolerated and the subsequent prostitution of rating agencies who abandoned their independence helped grow a web of lies and deceit to mask the venality and corruption of the city and wall street. It became a game divorced from reality and,as everyone knows in a game, the normal rules and ethics which govern us don’t apply. Every form of abuse needs a sponsor and our modern day robber barons are still living in denial, deluded by an grossly inflated sense of their entitlement to obscene earnings and it seems, they are still free to hold us to ransom. That cocaine/ testosterone driven 30-something extraverts would flourish in such a get-rich-quick environment hardly seems a surprise.
Hi, Gordon.
Good to hear from you.
To be fair, though she is seeking to redress what she feels (and I agree with her) is an imbalance in society, especially in the U.S., she is not asserting a dichotomy but a continuum along which the same person can slide according to circumstances. Temperament does impose constraints upon just how far we can slide. The appeal of the book for me is that it adds to the rich pattern of thinking that is emerging about the various ways our society has lost the plot, whether we are talking about McGilchrist in ‘The Master and his Emissary,’ where he studies the effects of our modernist culture’s shutting out the right side of the brain, or Kahlberg’s ‘Beyond the Culture of Contest.’
Her book doesn’t intend to address in any depth the other issues you raise. Her economic crisis point comes towards the end of her book and is not explored except as an example of where the imbalance can lead. There are many powerful models such as ‘Groupthink’ and Zimbardo’s Lucifer Effect that tackle it more completely.
Thanks for the feedback Peter, I enjoy your posts. I will add McGilchrist to my beach bag this summer and have already ordered the Cain book. Best wishes from old Cathay.